LLtnTEAN SOOIETT OP LONDON. 35 



He was tlie founder of the Romanes Lectureship at Oxford, 

 and nominated the first three lecturers, viz. : — the Rt. Hon. "W. E. 

 Gladstone, the Et. Hon. T. H. Huxley, and Dr. Weismann. 



He was elected a Fellow of this Society in 1875, and served 

 as Zoological Secretary from 1881 to 1885. He removed from 

 London to Oxford in 1890 ; but his health for nearly three years 

 had been a source of gravest anxiety to his friends, and he passed 

 away on May23rd, 1894, only three days after the -IGth anniversary 

 of his birthday. 



His genuine disposition, his wide range of sympathies, and his 

 unalloyed goodness of heart, endeared him to a large circle of 

 friends, who mourn his loss and will cherish his memory. 



In the death of Eichard Spruce the Society has to deplore the 

 loss of the most distinguished botanist and explorer who has 

 joined the majority within the past twelve months. He was 

 the son of the village schoolmaster of Granthorpe, Terrington, in 

 the North Eiding of Yorkshire ; was born in that place on 

 September 10th, 1817, and, having shown capacity for mathe- 

 matics early in life, was appointed on the staff of St. Peter's 

 Collegiate School at York. He devoted his leisure time to the 

 study of the plants of his native county, and in 1841 his 

 first publication appeared in the first volume of the ' Phyto- 

 logist,' being an account of the mosses and liverworts of 

 Teesdale, a rich district which was practically opened up to 

 bryologists by his efforts. The following year he paid a visit to 

 Dr. Thomas Taylor in Ireland, and to this visit may be attributed 

 much of the permanence of his devotion to the Muscinese, which 

 closed only with his life. The same year also witnessed his 

 election as a Fellow of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh, in 

 whose ' Transactions ' much of his bryological work was issued. 

 Short papers on the mosses and hepatics of Eskdale and Teesdale 

 appeared in the ' Phy tologist ' and the ' Annals and Magazine of 

 Natural History ' in 1844, and in 1845 he printed a list of all 

 the species knoAvn as occurring in Yorkshire (Phytologist, ii.). 

 His health being indifferent, he started on an expedition to the 

 Pyrenees, where he spent a year, collecting both flowering and 

 cryptogamic plants : a description of his experiences will be 

 found in the ' London Journal of Botany,' 1846, in three letters 

 to Sir William Hooker. On his return he issued his Pyrenean 

 plants in sets, and described his novelties in the ' Annals and 

 Magazine,' 1849-50, and the Edinburgh Botanical Society's 

 ' Transactions,' 1850, which showed most conspicuously his merits. 

 As soon as the last part of the foregoing was published, 

 Mr. Spruce sailed from Liverpool for South America on June 7th, 

 1849, to collect from that rich region, his expenses being defrayed 

 by a small association of botanists with Sir William Hooker and 

 Mr. Bentham at their head, the latter of whom undertook to 

 receive the plants provisionally, name them, distribute them, and 

 collect the subscriptions, acting, in fact, as his agent. On 



d2 



